DU Video Pre-release - Bob Fritrakis speaks at "Who got glitched" Teach-In

[dzika]

March 26, 2005

** An exclusive pre-release for the DU 2004 Election Forum **

Video pre-release - Bob Fritrakis "Who got glitched: Election Reform Teach-in"

(video pre-release #1)

Speaker: Bob Fritrakis
Recorded: 2/27 in Santa Monica, CA
Length: 12:10
Size: about 20MB

Bob Fritrakis of the Columbus Free Press and attorney (Moss vs. Bush/Cheney/Blackwell) speaks about the stolen 2004 Presidential election in Ohio. He talks about the Bush family history of stealing elections, problems in the 2004 election, legal cases surrounding the 2004 election, exit polls and much more.

This is just the first video in a series of speakers from the Election Reform Teach-in conducted in Santa Monica, CA. Within 2 weeks, videos all of the speakers will be available as a DVD and for internet broadcast at citizensact.org .

Steve Brown has done a wonderful job creating these videos. You will notice that these are high quality digital videos with multiple camera angles and produced by professionals.

Over the next few weeks, pre-release videos of all of the speakers will be published to the Democratic Underground Election Forum. You can see the original announcement for this teach-in at this DU thread.



Video in Windows Media format

Video in QuickTime format

Feel free to let me know if you have any trouble with viewing or downloading.

Please keep this kicked so everyone can view it.

[demodonkey]

1. Fantastic! Thanks David (and BOB, too!)

:kick:

[dzika]

2. kick

[glitch]

3. Now THIS is what I am talking about! Excellent way to amplify the message

I anxiously await the dvd, thanks!

[Helga Scow Stern]

4. This is even more riveting than when I saw it in person.

The thing it most reinforces for me now is the contrast between the clear criminal Blackwell and the California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley.

The (federal) Election Assistance Commission, at the urging of Conny McCormack and "journalist" Marc Strassman, is spending two months investigating Shelley, while they let Blackwell slide.

That alone is reason for serious suspicion about what's going on in California.

[seriousstan]

5. It would have been better if he hadn't lied about the voting precincts.

As a poll worker for over 15 years, I can assure you the precinct you are assigned to is ALWAYS according to your address.

[dzika]

6. "lied"?

That's a pretty strong accusation.

You can contact Bob Fitrakis at [email protected]

[seriousstan]

7. "You don't vote at your neighborhood precinct, you vote at the precinct

Kenneth Blackwell assigns you."

Either he is lying or he is ignorant of facts. I don't think he is ignorant of facts.

[dzika]

9. Bob's Response

Stan, I sent your comments to Bob and got the following response:

David,

What I was referring to was the fact that in Columbus, I live half a block up the street from a polling place, Franklin Alternative School, 2/10th of a mile away. I am not assigned to vote there.

I am assigned to vote at the Model Neighborhood facility which is .55 miles from my house. It is five blocks north and two blocks east from my house. That's what I meant about not being assigned to your neighborhood precinct.

People who live close to the Model Neighborhood building vote at Franklin Alternative School.

Indeed, precincts are assigned always according to addresses. It's just that in this case, the assignment makes no logical sense as to convenience for the voters.

Serioustan is stating the seriously obvious and missing the main point.

Bob Fitrakis

[seriousstan]

14. So Bob must believe voters should be allowed to vote anywhere they see fit

Because there is no way to draw precincts that eliminate some people not voting at the closest polling place, unless you overlap the precincts.

I may be stating the obvious but he was being disingenuous and deceptive. He made a pretty big stink about having to drag his ass a WHOLE .35 miles further, by his estimation, to be able to vote. He also lied, oh I'm sorry....misled...people about the distance his voting place is from his house. Funny he knows it is exactly .55 miles away now but not when he was making the speech.

I also find it amusing that he didn't like not being able to vote in his own neighborhood. when he wrote this piece ...http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/978... he was gleefully reveling in the unity of "his" neighborhood.

He also stated the you have to vote where Blackwell tells you to. Well, of course you do! THAT'S HIS JOB. The fact is that he tells you where to vote as determined by the precinct boundaries.

If he is against assigned polling places he should come out and state the case instead of complaining about the results of living in a 3 dimensional reality where if you make district, precincts, boundaries and the like not everything can be equidistant.

[dzika]

15. I think that a pattern of voter suppression by Blackwell is the point.

The closing and/or changing of inner-city precincts has the effect of suppressing the minority vote. Maybe Bob could have chosen a different example as evidence of this fact.

Closing precincts in large cities is just one of the tools that Blackwell used to suppress Kerry voters in Ohio.

At least, that's what I got out of it.

I can't speak for Bob's motives but I don't get the feeling that he was intentionally trying to mislead the audience. He would respond if you emailed him your concerns at the address I posted upthread. I don't feel like it is my place to initiate further contact with him on this point.

I appreciate that you took the time to view the video and post your comments!

[seriousstan]

16. Just a few points. There were no inner-city precincts closed or boundaries

changed. The cities of Hilliard, Reynoldsburg, Westerville and Grove city councils took it upon themselves to redraw the ward outlines which then required a compensative change in precinct boundaries. If you know Columbus, these are by no means inner-city areas.

The only other change was one that started about 4 years ago when we (the poll workers) were required to fill out a questionnaire about the physical aspects of our polling place. They wanted to know about curb height, handicap parking, threshold height and the likes. It all had to do will handicap accessibility. I do not know if any polling places were moves as a result of this, but it is a possibility.

[Carolab]

19. Why did they redraw the ward outlines?

I don't understand why so many precinct polling places seemed to have changed in the last election or two. In my precinct, when I canvassed door-to-door to GOTV, people actually complained to me that the polling places they had gone to year after year were moved farther away. Also, my polling place this year consolidated two precincts, which was a departure from the 2000 and 2002 elections. I cannot imagine why unless the objective is to create a "log jam" at the polls.

[seriousstan]

21. The ward outlines were redrawn because of population shifts.

These places are all outside the city and have experienced a major increase in population. I believe the limit for a precinct is somewhere around 1200 "active" voters. This is obviously a difficult number to track given the people moving, new registers and people who are registered but haven't voted for a while.

As for consolidating polling places, one reason I mentioned above is for handicap access. Older polling places often do not meet the requirements. One of them is a door threshold limit of 1/2 inch in height. Another thing that has happen since 9/11 is many schools no longer want the polling places in their building.

I think the election board also has trouble getting enough workers to man the polling places and this might influence some decisions. I have worked the polls for over 15 years and I don't see too many new faces. I would suggest to everyone who complains about the system to sign up and work the polls and see what the problems and trials are firsthand.

[LatePeriduct]

20. Hey "Serious Stan"

You don't have any "Serious Evidence" of your accusations. In more than four precincts I went to by the way, in my home state, if you were so much as across the street from the polling place you couldn't vote at that polling place.

In fact, they made you run all the way down a mile and a half from the area and go to a different polling place, which no one in the end knows if it was "correct" really or not because these places don't keep track of that information.

It must be co-incidence that 90% of the people "across the street" were simply newly registered democrats or what not. Nah, I mean couldn't be right.

Your attitude sounds largely dominionist to me, thinking that all these laws are just automatically "neccesary" and applicable no matter what

But hey, you might be able to fool me once. Just read the real news which they don't show on TV.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/politics/27OHIO.html

[seriousstan]

22. "if you were so much as across the street from the polling place"......

So, if you lived AT the polling place, you could vote there?
sarcasm off

As for what polling place you should go to, I would think the Election Board could tell you for sure.

[LatePeriduct]

25. No no, actually...

If you lived behind the actual polling place, clear on the opposite side where all the wealthy folks live who are traditional republican, you could vote right there at the polling place.

But that was a good far cry estimate. And the board of elections didn't tell you anything, you were set to call a phone number to know where to vote. And sometimes, that phone number would guess or apologize for misleading you.

[LatePeriduct]

29. kick

[Iceburg]

26. The speech is indeed very powerful but Bob did distort the facts

about "not being able to vote in neighborhood precincts" ... which weakens the overall impact. I actually cringed when he made those specific remarks. There is more than enough real evidence that the voters' intent was not upheld in Ohio (and other states) without resorting to a subjective and less-than-factual commentary on an facet of the election that even if true had little impact on the overall results in comparison to the other factors that did. In a 7 minute address that will be viewed by hundreds of thousands, is this really something Bob wants to devote any time to? I think not. His commentary on that particular subject will serve only to discredit him, which is very unfortunate indeed.

I have worked in the planning and delivery of elections all my life and I can assure you that in elections where there are district-based contests (such as Congress, where each district has about 640,000 people and the House Districts with approx 110,000 people per district), there will always be some people that can't vote in the nearest precinct. It should be obvious at this point that the district boundaries are primarily based on census population data and as such, streets will inevitably carved up and assigned to one district versus another. If we leave gerrymandering outside this discussion, then clearly the vast majority of people will fall well inside the boundaries, while a minority will live exactly on the boundary line. My guess is that Bob lives very close to the perimeter one such boundary line.

Now if Bob was trying to make a point about gerrymandering (the abuse in re-districting) he could have chosen far better examples and perhaps a map to illustrate his point. Take any house district map or Cuyahoga, Hamilton,Franklin and even the layperson can see the DNA of gerrymandering. But keep in mind then you are now into the unwinnable argument of who was responsible for defining these boundaries -- the Dems or the Repubs? Point#1: Both parties have had there hand in the gerrymander jar. Point #2: It is abusive but NOT illegal.

What happened in Ohio goes beyond abuse, and while we must not lose sight of the abuses, the malfeasance should be in the cross hairs.

Bob's mistake aside, I did enjoy the video very much -- a succinct platter of facts delivered with passion. If Bob wants membership in the exclusive "Reason before Passion" club, he needs to fine-tune his message.

[dzika]

8. kick

[dzika]

10. one last kick...

.

[garybeck]

11. does this guy define the word "guts" or what?

I pray for his safety.

This is exactly what we need. Fiery speeches. Talking the truth. Howard Beale style. Bob should have his own radio show.

Gary

[dzika]

12. We will have 10-14 speeches from the Teach-in

I haven't seen them all yet but what I have seen so far are moving.

[FreedomAngel82]

13. Kick

I downloaded and I'll have to watch later this evening.

[Helga Scow Stern]

23. That whole afternoon was pretty inspiring and informative.

I am looking forward to being able to rewatch it.

[tommcintyre]

17. I hope Bob testifies at the Carter Election Reform Commission!

Excellent! Lots of facts, well organized and strong delivery.

[Helga Scow Stern]

24. Jim Baker's head might explode.

[kster]

18. kick.....nt

[Paddy Maynooth]

27. kick

[tinanator]

28. Gun control, Kennedy assassination and vote counting fraud

brings out the "more level headed" posters every time ;)